When deploying an umbilical subsea, there are several sections that have to be spliced together. The main umbilical (static umbilical) comes in sections and has to be spliced into one length together, and the static umbilical has to be spliced together with the dynamic umbilical. All this splicing has to be done on a ship while the umbilical is deployed. Today, a normal splice operation is about 12 hours for each splice. A normal operation for deploying an umbilical will have more than 4 splices, depending on the length of the umbilical. The operation is also dependent on the weather. In heavy seas, the operator sometimes has to abort the operation and cut the umbilical for safety issues. The most important issue for the process in laying down an umbilical is the time the ship has to wait for splicing the umbilical sections together. Also, it is desirable to keep the physical size of a splicing box as small as possible.
Up to now this time consuming splice work has not been possible to speed up.